Weather Veins
by isawet
Summary: Nicole grows up in Purgatory, and falls in love with Waverly Earp.


Nicole's mother kisses her temple goodnight, wet-eyed, and Nicole acquiesces with the limited understanding of a child, squirming but pliable. "Just terrible," her mother says, sighing, "those poor girls."

"What girls?" Hayley asks, leaning upside down from the top bunk, her hair falling in a loose tangle around her face.

"Never you mind," their mother says. "Go to sleep."

"Yeah," Nicole says, blowing at Hayley's hair to make it fly into her face. "Never you mind, Haybale."

"Mom!" Hayley cries out, indignant.

"Don't tease your sister," their mother says absently. She hesitates at the doorway. "Nicky, are any of the Earp girls in your class?"

"No," Nicole says, on her back so she can kick Hayley through the mattress above her, legs pulled back under her blanket, waiting for her mother to leave. "Waverly's younger than me and Wynonna 'n Willa're older."

"Wynonna's in my class," Hayley chirps, "I mean, she was supposed to be. Mr. Daro used to call her name on the roll sheet, before she went bonkers."

"Hayley Heather Haught," their mother snaps. Nicole sniggers.

"That's what Mr. Rotan said," Hayley protests.

"Don't talk about people that way," their mother says, clicking the light off. "It's not ladylike."

Nicole waits for her mother's footsteps to fade. She thumps her heel against the mattress above her. "Goddamn you," Hayley hisses, what their father yells in traffic when their mother's not around.

"That's not ladylike," Nicole says, smug.

/

Waverly's class and Nicole's class have the same lunch period, and Nicole realizes it when she sees a girl so sad it stops her in her tracks. Another girl has her arm around her shoulders, but something about her face, so scrunched and small and grieving, makes Nicole's stomach flip. It's something so alien to her, real loss that breaks into her normal nine-to-five life with two married parents who make good money and pulling her sister's pigtails, loss like a needle in a balloon, and she recoils from it, unable to articulate just what makes her so uncomfortable. When she walks by the table she can't help but stare, poking at the feeling like a half-torn scab, and Waverly looks up.

Their eyes meet for a second, Waverly's red and shot with tears. Nicole looks away.

/

Nicole should be walking fast but she's meandering instead, kicking at the rocks on the sidewalk and watching them skitter away. Hayley's at home sick today so she gets to walk to school by herself, already six minutes late out of the house because of her mother's fussing. She'd promised to hotfoot it to class but instead she takes the long way around, sipping the soda she'd stopped at the drugstore to buy, forbidden sugar bubbles burning on her tongue.

She comes up on the back entrance, the drop off lane empty after the morning rush, and there's a girl sitting on the curb, hiding behind the long curtain of her hair. Her shoulders are shaking. Nicole freezes in the shade of a hunched over tree, the breeze ruffling the leaves. She thinks about both her parents dead, Hayley sent away, and tears prick at her eyes. She looks at the cola in her hand and knows there's another in her backpack, sweating cold drops on her notebook.

Someone comes out of the school and gathers Waverly up, the school nurse, and takes her inside. Nicole throws the half-empty soda bottle in the recycling bin. She doesn't dawdle on her way to class.

She ducks away from her friends at lunch to go to the bathroom, and when she's doing up her pants someone bangs into the stall next to her and starts to cry. Nicole stands still, watching Waverly's pink sneakers next to her and gropes for words. She can't find any, so she flushes the toilet with the bottom of her shoe and flees. She slips into Waverly's classroom and leaves the extra soda on the desk with Waverly's nameplate, decorated with little butterfly stickers, and writes Waverly's name in her best penmanship, with a little heart above the _e_ , on a post-it, leaves it stuck to the red plastic bottlecap.

She sees Waverly holding it in the parking lot after school, waiting for her ride, mostly drunk, and grins her way home, humming some old song Hayley plays on repeat in their room, bubblegum pop.

/

On her birthday her mother makes her favorite, breaded chicken over butter noodles and sweet potato casserole with extra marshmallows. Her father gives her an air rifle, over her mother's faintly disapproving glare, and new boots, which she clomps around in while Hayley teases her and her mother cuts the cake (red velvet with cream cheese frosting). No candles, because she'd knocked over Hayley's two years ago and set the tablecloth on fire.

"Mom," she says, washing cake down with fruit punch, "if you and Dad die, what happens to me 'n Hayley?"

"I sell you to a farm," Hayley says, having declared herself too mature for fruit punch, "and you sleep in a barn for the rest of your life."

"Be nice to your sister," their mother says absently, doing dishes and feeling like it's too late in the night to take sibling crabbing seriously.

Their father cracks a beer and spins the bottlecap across the table to Nicole's fingers. "You can always ride the rails," he muses, stretching back. "No bills, no annoying little daughters…"

"Dad," Nicole whines, and he reaches across the table to tousle her hair before standing and going to embrace their mother from behind. He kisses her neck and she giggles.

"Imagine," he says dramatically, "no slamming doors, no shrieking in the early morning on weekends…"

"Mm," their mother says, sighing big and loud, "if only." She kisses him sideways, suds up to her elbows.

"Gross," Hayley says, and leaves.

Nicole frowns at her cake. "I asked a question," she reminds them. "You can't distract me from answering."

"Our little detective," her father says fondly.

"You'd go to your Aunt Irene's," her mother says, turning the faucet off and reaching for a dishtowel. "In Minnesota."

Nicole pulls a face. "Ew. It smells like fish there."

"It smells like cows here," her father says, kissing her cheek. He smells like beer and the funny gum her mother makes him chew. "You'd get used to it. Go on and play before the sun goes down."

Nicole hops down from the chair, cake forgotten. She wants to show Brian from next door her new rifle.

A month later and school's out; Nicole stalks Brian through backroads, scuttling to the sidewalk when she hears a car coming, pretending she can pick out his tracks in the dust. She pops out from behind a tree and pulls the trigger. _crack_ goes the rifle, and she pulls the bolt back to reload another burst of air. "Got you," she says, strutting with the rifle leaned against her should like she's seen in the movies.

"You missed," he says.

"Did not."

"Did too."

Nicole leans the barrel against his chest and pulls the trigger again. _crack_. "Got you again."

"You didn't," Brian says, face scrunched up. He slaps the toy out of her hands. "You missed. Girls always miss."

Nicole bunches her hands up into fists. "I didn't miss. I got you twice."

"Didn't," Brian says, and pushes her. She falls, surprised, her face scraping against the ground, and by the time she gets up he's running off. She touches her cheek and feels scratched skin, a little blood. She's too mad to feel hurt. She kicks a rock, angry, and snatches up her rifle from the ground. She trains it on his retreating back, running home through the long field, and fires it so he can hear her get him again. _crack_

The streetlights flicker on, her cue to head home, and she sighs. She's a little turned around, but there's not much road in Purgatory, and she knows she'll hit a mainstreet if she points herself towards the cluster of bright stars hanging low in the horizon. She holds the rifle pointed downwards and practices quickdrawing as she walks, trying to remember the John Wayne lines her father likes.

She's walking by a tree that's perfect for climbing, big knots and strong branches, and she's already gonna get it for being back late, so she leans the gun against the trunk and scrambles up to see if she can see the moon rising. It's not as tall as she thought, and she can't see much except other trees and homesteads-she's way farther from home than she's supposed to be- but she can just barely see into the elementary school playground where she used to play just a few years ago. She wishes she'd bought the rifle up with her-maybe she can steal one of Hayley's old scarves and make a back sling for it. She thinks about waiting outside Brian's house up a tree and scaring him good early in the morning and grins. She turns to climb down and catches movement in the corner of her eye. Sitting on the curb outside one of the houses is Waverly, drawing on the pavement with chalk. Something makes Nicole go still, watching her. She's had two years of no Waverly, because she'd left elementary school before Waverly had, but Nicole thinks that when school starts up again in the fall she'll probably see her around. After a minute someone must call her in, because she stands, wiping her hands on her jeans, and disappears up the driveway.

Nicole slides down through the branches and snags her rifle up, trotting over to where Waverly'd been sitting. There's chalk lying abandoned, rolling dangerously close to the storm drain, and Nicole rescues it. She looks at the drawing. It's a cake in pink and purple, with red candles and little scrapes of yellow for flame. _happy birthday willa_ it says between brown and white layers. Nicole rolls the chalk in her hands and looks up and down the street. She's alone, the wind whistling, and even in summer once the sun goes down it gets cold. She bends quickly and sketches fast, afraid of being caught. She puts the chalk down where it won't roll away and steps back. She's never been a great artist, and she loses her nerve quickly, moving to wipe it away with her foot, but the porchlight comes on and she rabbits away instead, feet pounding to make it around the corner.

She leaves a lumpy oversized cupcake in her wake, green and orange _happy wednesday waverly_ with a misshapen heart scrawled to the side in white because she couldn't find red.

/

"Take your sister with you," their mother says, handing them poptarts to go.

"Mom!" Hayley is all preteen angst, distraught. "I'll be busy cheering, I don't have time for her."

"Maybe she'll want to join the team," their mother says, "it'll be good for you girls to do something together, and Nicky could use an activity."

"Dinosaur feet here would topple the whole pyramid," Hayley says, rolling her eyes, and Nicole flushes. She'd tripped her way out of dance class, even though Dad promises that her legs just haven't caught up to her feet yet.

"You start high school in the fall," their mother says to Nicole, "and you should have an extracurricular for college." She trails her fingers around Nicole's bright red braid, Hayley's having darkened to their father's brown. "You're such a pretty girl," she says, "cheer would be good for you."

"Can't I have one thing without you ruining it," Hayley hisses as they slide into the carpool minivan.

Nicole ignores her, smiling politely at Rachel's mom, and watches Purgatory flash by through the car window, Hayley chattering to her friends behind her. They pull up at the gym and Nicole slides out, her thighs peeling to the seat in the sticky heat. She follows the girls through the doors into the sweltering shade of the gym and pulls a face at the smell.

Hayley hands her a five dollar bill. "Here. Go buy yourself a hotdog and don't get kidnapped until we're done. Don't even think about asking for a tryout."

"I don't want to be on your stupid cheer team," Nicole snaps, and Hayley rolls her eyes again. Nicole crosses the gym and lingers by the sign-up tables. She imagines trying out for Hayley's team and being so good, so talented, that they immediately kick Hayley off for her. It buoys her mood enough for her to check out the junior team flyer, curious. A parent volunteer is chatting to someone.

"They practice by cheering for the basketball team," she's saying, "so they can work all the kinks out before they move up to the under nineteens and cheer for the boys football."

"Nothing wrong with basketball," the woman says, and stares down the volunteer until she mumbles and turns to Nicole.

"Would you like a sign-up form?"

Nicole shrugs and lets the lady chatter at her, listening with half an ear, because Waverly slides up to the other woman, smiling. Her hair is longer than when school had let out, and she's braided little beads into it, jasmine flowers by her temples. Nicole takes a deep breath and can smell it, even above the sweat and heat. "Did you get the form?" she's asking. "Chrissy says it's fun."

The woman frowns. "You sure this is what you want? We could try…?"

"Gus," Waverly cajoles, "I wanna cheer with my friends. Don't you think I'm perky enough?" She strikes a little pose, big smile, her eyes crinkling at the corner. Nicole feels like she's suddenly run a mile, the air thinner in her lungs. "Chrissy says it's all in the smile and the wave."

"Fine," the woman-Gus-says, and signs the form before handing it to another volunteer. "Junior cheer it is."

"Yay!" Waverly cheers, and skips away.

"I want to sign up for basketball," Nicole says, interrupting whatever it is the lady had been saying.

"Are you sure?" she asks, "there isn't a girl's team, you see-maybe you'd like to try honor guard? The ribbons are real pretty."

Nicole frowns. "I want to play basketball," she says again, stubborn.

A hand falls on her shoulder and she jumps. "She can try out for the team, can't she?" Gus asks. "I've seen Jack Brennan's girl playing."

The woman frowns. "Technically it's coed," she admits, "but-"

"Great," Gus says, snatching the form off the table and steering Nicole away. "You should probably practice," she says, handing Nicole the paper. "Best of luck to you, girl."

"Thanks," Nicole says, but the woman's already disappeared into the crowd. Nicole looks down and thinks about Waverly in the uniform Hayley wears, smiling and cheering, just for her. She tucks the five dollars Hayley had given her into a pocket, all thoughts of hotdogs gone. She thinks it'll be twenty dollars at least, to buy a basketball.

/

Nicole practices by herself, the court deserted in the early morning, trying to emulate what her father showed her in their driveway before he had to go to work. Her arms are heavy and she's sweated through her shirt by the time the older boys come swaggering on the court. "Go on," they jeer lightly at her as she misses a free throw, "we're trying for a game, firecrotch. Get lost."

Nicole retreats to the other side of the park, where the hoops are half the normal height. She feels re-energized through anger, and dribbles from one end of the half-court to the other, over and over. She breaks for water and hears a scuffle, low voices and then a high pitched one she recognizes. Waverly is standing in front of one of the basketball boys, her hands on her hips.

"You did that on purpose," she's saying, angry, and Nicole sees a backpack spilled out on the ground, gel pens rolling.

"Prove it," the boy sneers, "think anyone will believe a crazy Earp over me?"

Nicole sucks in a breath, the ball falling from her hands and bouncing away. She's frozen in indecision, but Waverly tips up her chin. "You wouldn't say that if Wynonna were here."

"She's not," the boy says, shoves Waverly, enough to knock her backwards. Nicole starts across the park, picking up her pace, unsure of what she'll do when she gets there.

"No, I am," Waverley says, and kicks the boy in the crotch. He exhales once, sharply, eyes wide, then tips and falls over. His friends are frozen in surprise. Nicole reaches them on autopilot, gaping, and bends to help Waverly pick up her pens and notebook. "Thanks," Waverly says without looking at her, and scuttles away.

Nicole looks down at the boy who'd called her firecrotch, gasping wetly into the dirt, and looks at Waverly's retreating back. She smiles.

/

Nicole goes to her first homecoming and shouts at the referee as Purgatory High loses badly, her friends pulling at her laughingly from the side, and after she goes to her first high school dance and dances her first slow dance with Nick, who she's known since the third grade, his breath blowing hot and nervous on her neck, her hands sweaty where they're laying on his checkered button up shoulders. When they turn awkwardly to the music, their feet stumbling over each other, she can see her friends standing clustered by the indoor bleachers, flashing her thumbs up and giggling behind their hands. On a turn she sees Wynonna coming out of the bathroom, tucking a bottle away in her jacket, body too loose and eyes too glazed. Nicole closes her eyes and leans her head on Nick's solid shoulder. She's taller than him and it's awkward on her neck, but this is what Hayley had squealed about, helping her with her makeup and lending her clothes, music playing in their room as they spun about and laughed. When the music ends he needs two tries to tie a corsage around her wrist, the wilted tulip trembling as his hands shake.

Later she goes to the bathroom with her friends and they giggle about Nick, making sex jokes to see if they can get each other to blush, borrowing strawberry gloss from each other's pockets and kissing perfect lip prints into folded squares of cheap brown paper towel.

Nicole dances with Nick two more times and he holds her hand when they walk out of the gym, sweaty palms sliding. "Maybe I could call you sometime," he says, and then kisses her. He knocks their noses against each other and shoves his tongue in her mouth and she lets him because she's pretty sure it's what she's supposed to want. Hesitantly, she slides her own tongue in his mouth and closes her eyes because they all close their eyes on television. It's wet and pressure and she's generally glad when it's over, Nick flushing and smiling at her.

"Okay," Nicole says, a late answer to his question, and he hurries back to his group of friends, rubbing the back of his neck as they laugh. Nicole's own friends surround her, giggling, and they head to where Laura's mom is going to pick them up. Nicole shakes them off. "I'll walk," she says.

"Oh let her have her some alone time," Laura says, waggling eyebrows, and Nicole flips them off below the window where Laura's mom can't see it.

She enjoys the cool air after the stuffiness of the dance, and looks at the smears of red and yellow glitter on her skin from the decorations she'd leaned against on accident. She wishes Hayley's skinny jeans had deeper pockets so she could stick her hands in all the way, but she finds a piece of gum squished down into the left one and is unwrapping it when she hears someone throwing up just into the treeline. She hesitates. Her parents had always told her to stick to the main roads, but she likes the outskirt ones better-quieter, more peaceful.

"Hello?" she calls out.

There's the sound of someone throwing up again, and Nicole figures it's probably not the call of a serial murderer so she walks into the trees. Wynonna Earp is sitting against a trunk, wiping at her mouth. She smells like alcohol and vomit, and when she looks at Nicole her eyes slide around like she can't focus them. Nicole crunches to a stop in front of her, avoiding the vomit puddle. "You need help?"

"Probably," Wynonna mutters, and then she laughs, sharp and bitter. "I hate this town," she whispers, and Nicole thinks for a panicked minute that she might cry. But then her gaze sharpens. "What brings a little thing like yourself to the woods? Nick leave you wet and wanting?"

"Yeah," Nicole says, because basketball has made her spine stiff and her eyes cool, "fuck you too." She turns to leave and only makes it three more steps. She sighs and turns back around, shucking her light jacket. It's Hayley's and she'll be pissed, but she wouldn't have lent it to Nicole if she'd really cared about it. She tosses it around Wynonna's shoulders and presses the stick of gum into Wynonna's fingers.

"You're nice," Wynonna says quietly. "Too bad I won't remember any of this in the morning."

Nicole steps back and considers her. There's a little vomit in her hair, and blood on her knuckles. "Waverly deserves better than you," she says, and Wynonna flinches.

Two weeks later and Hayley's still in a huff. Apparently she had really liked that jacket, and lent it to Nicole in a moment of sisterly weakness. Their beds haven't been lofted in years but she still comes over in the middle of the night, knocking on the frame. "Sorry I was a bitch," she whispers.

"Have you stopped?" Nicole whispers back, and smiles when Hayley whacks her shoulder.

"I saw Wynonna Earp at the bus station today," Hayley continues, "in my jacket! You must have put it down at the dance and she stole it, the cunt. Julie says she got on a bus to Vegas to marry some rich old man."

"Yeah," Nicole says, "we get a lot of rich businessmen from Nevada in Purgatory."

Hayley hits her again, halfhearted. "I don't know if it's Vegas or Reno, but I don't think she's coming back." She goes back to her own bed and Nicole rolls over to look at the opposite wall. Hayley's annoying and cares about all the things Nicole really doesn't care about and they fight more than they coexist, but she thinks about Hayley getting on a bus somewhere without a jacket of her own, still drunk from the night before, and she has to blink fast not to cry.

/

It's the last game before the season ends, and Nicole is already looking forward to high school tryouts. She warms up slow and easy with her teammates and listens with half an ear to the pregame chatter as she stretches. She hears pompoms rustling and turns to see the junior cheer team with yellow ribbons trailing onto their shoulders, giggling.

"Hey," she says to Laura to her left, "hey, you're in school with Waverly, right?"

Laura comes over to help her stretch her leg. "Waverly Earp? Yeah."

"How is she," Nicole asks, trying for casual.

Laura narrows her eyes a little. "Cool I guess? We don't hang, but she has all these friends-" she pulls a face. "Stephanie."

"Ew," Nicole agrees. "Waverly's not like that," she says a little wistfully, watching Waverly bend at the waist to gather her hair up into a high ponytail.

Laura drops her leg and snorts. "How do you know?"

Nicole rips her gaze away and stands. "I can tell. She's… more."

"You're fucking weird," Laura says, and the coach blows his whistle. Nicole pushes Waverly from her mind, but she can't help a little strut in her walk when she runs down the side with the cheer team, a look back after she makes a three pointer to see if Waverly saw.

/

Nicole walks home after basketball practice everyday during the season, two months where she can dawdle past Waverly's house and try not to stare in the lit window. Sometimes when she's stayed late helping put the equipment away it's quiet and dark enough she can hear the mumble of Waverly's voice from inside, the bright bell twinkling of her laugh.

Once, she comes up on Waverly carrying groceries into the house, and trips over her feet while thinking about the best general nod and wave, how to introduce herself. She catches herself awkwardly and hides behind a tree, watching Waverly huff and puff and grumble good naturedly, paper bags against her chest. Nicole imagines stepping up and helping her carry them inside, if Waverly'd smile at her, straight white teeth. The moment passes while she's frozen, indecisive, and Waverly shuts the trunk to bounce up the steps, humming.

Nicole hums the same snatch of song the rest of the way home, warmed by the way Waverly's hair fell across her face; something like missed opportunity sticking in her gut.

/

Nicole thinks she might make Captain this year, and as a junior it's a pretty big deal. Tryouts aren't for a while yet, swimming and field hockey taking up the fall season, basketball saved for the winter months. Even so she starts school with the pressure behind her eyelids, adding after school solo practice on the days she's not playing in the only little league Purgatory has to offer. Her coach, who is incidentally also her history teacher, pulls her aside the first week and tells her to bring her A game this season, that he's pulled strings to get a few scouts out.

She walks out his room in a daze, worried about blowing her chances to play basketball _real_ women's basketball, at some big state school where she won't know a single goddamn person. Waverly Earp comes out of the freshman orientation line, peering at a fistful of papers, and Nicole almost walks into the row of lockers. She course-corrects and then follows, her height letting her stay behind Waverly without losing sight of her. Waverly stops at a locker and frowns at it before rolling the metal dial in her fingers. It takes her three tries to open it and when she does she digs in her side back for one of those bright mirrors Hayley has in their room at home. She sticks it to the back of the locker and when she smiles Nicole can see it in the reflection.

"Hey," Laura says, slinging an arm around her shoulders, and Nicole jolts. She walks away, but not without a last glance back at Waverly, stacking books in her locker. She hesitates with one, a worn looking paperback, and tucks it back in her bag instead. She checks her makeup in the mirror and Nicole thinks about masks.

/

"I don't want your extra Y chromosomes on my stuff," Hayley is huffing, but Nicole ignores her, digging through the bookshelf. She knew that book Waverly'd had looked familiar, and she pulls it from Hayley's shelf with a cry of victory. "Oh," Hayley says, "you can borrow that. Sure. Don't bother to ask or anything."

"Your eyeliner is crooked," Nicole tells her, and Hayley gasps like she's been stabbed in the back.

/

Nicole reads the book in the time after school ends but before she goes out to the court, waiting for the last period kids to clear out of the locker rooms and stop loitering under the bleachers. She likes it better in the evenings anyway: it's cooler, and quieter, and easier for her to focus. She finishes the book in a week and has to resist the urge to throw it across the quad.

"What the hell is this," she demands of Hayley, shaking it.

"It's a book," Hayley snaps.

"It's _garbage_ ," Nicole snaps, throwing it on the bed and clenching her fists. "All princesses and princes and being _saved_ ," she spits the last word to get it out of her mouth, Waverly reading about being saved like she didn't take on a boy twice her size on a playground and come out on top, like she doesn't go into everyday smiling even though she went through what she did.

"It's romantic, crazytown," Hayley says, rolling her eyes and turning back around. "Just imagine Nick as the prince and you as the princess. As if you ever wear dresses."

"I don't wear dresses because I don't want them to wrinkle in my bag when I work out," Nicole snaps, "and-that's not the point!"

Hayley stares at her. "What is the point?"

Nicole throws her hands up in the air. "I don't fucking know!"

/

It rains for two weeks and Nicole scours the school's library, forgoing ball skills for long runs after she gets home. It takes her ages and she has to ask very specific questions of the librarian, a small woman from France who doesn't really speak English and definitely doesn't understand what it is Nicole is looking for, but she finally finds it.

It's slim and dog eared and the last time someone checked it out was 1966 and the first four poems are confusing and boring and make Nicole feel like an idiot, but there's an insert written in someone's faded handwriting, like they wrote it there and left it; a secret message in a bound paper bottle. Nicole finds her best pen, the fine tip black gel, and copies it in her scratchy print, as neat as she can when her fingers slip on the grip, sweaty and nervous. She blows on the notebook paper to dry it, wishing she could write straight enough to do it on plain copy paper.

 _You are so full of rain_ she writes under Waverly's name after she's folded it up into a little square, because she doesn't know how to phrase _you are strong, you are more, you are enough_. She slips it into Waverly's locker on the way home and when the last glimpse of its folded paper edge disappears, the point of no return, her heart leaps.

She goes early to school and reads the bulletin posted in the hallway about the marching band's upcoming concert for twenty minutes because she can see Waverly's locker from the corner of her eye. When Waverly shows up, smiling with a friend, she has to focus on her breathing. Waverly opens her locker and waves at the friend, who bounces into the restroom. Nicole's breath catches, and she watches Waverly pull the paper out, a little crease between her eyebrows. She can feel her heart thumping in the roof of her mouth, like when she and Nick drove out into the woods to make out and drank plastic bottle vodka under the bright moon and she thought about what Waverly's scarf would feel like under her fingers when he kissed her.

Waverly unfolds it, reads for a moment, eyes widening, and looks around. Nicole snaps her eyes back to the board, reaching up to pull down a stub pledging five dollars to fund the band's trip to some contest or another. She gets nervous and yanks another one, her fingers leaving damp smudges on the cheap paper. She watches Waverly until her eyes burn with the strain, folding up the note and tucking it into the inside of her binder. Waverly smiles, and Nicole thinks it's a real one, different from the one Waverly gives to her other friends.

Nicole's grin lasts all the way through the day and to home, where she dumps her housekey into the dish her mother keeps in the entryway and finds the little band tickets in her pocket. She takes a tack from Hayley's desk and pins the stubs to her side of the wall, next to her bed, so she can reach out and feel their ragged perforations late at night before she goes to sleep.

/

When Nick touches her she gets a little jolt in her belly, and when he kisses her neck it feels good, but when he wants to stick his tongue in her mouth she mostly just lets him. It's kinda gross, she thinks personally, and a lot boring, and sometimes she keeps her eyes open to watch his face. He's sweet but they've been dating for a while now and Nicole figures she's gonna have to put out soon unless she breaks it off.

"Do you like kissing?" she asks Hayley one night, doing trigonometry on autopilot, lying stomach down on her bed.

Hayley is cleaning her makeup brushes and doing her nails, and shrugs a little. "Yeah, of course. Who doesn't?"

"Right," Nicole sighs. She scratches out an error and starts the problem again, squinting at the example in the textbook.

Hayley half turns in her chair. "Wait, do you not?" Nicole shrugs again, and Hayley comes over to the bed, bouncing to sit at her side. "Put that boring shit away."

"It's not boring," Nicole protests, more to argue with her sister than for any true feelings about natural logs.

Hayley flops to lie next to her and pulls Nicole's hand to rest on her belly, clucking at the short bitten nails. "Gross, Nicky." She starts to apply a base coat. "I didn't like kissing Larry, remember Larry?"

"Ugh," Nicole says, because she does remember Larry.

"But I really like kissing Chris," Hayley continues, blowing a cool stream of air across Nicole's fingers. "College boys are so much better, you'll see soon. You don't like kissing Nick at all?"

"Eh," Nicole says, giving up on math and pushing her papers aside. "I like hanging out with him."

Hayley purses her lips, thinking. "Maybe you just have to show him how to be a better kisser. Or maybe you're a shit kisser." She pulls up a little pot of pink polish.

"I am not a shit kisser," Nicole protests, "and I don't want that pink shit."

"Shut up," Hayley says, yanking her hand back down. "How else will people know you're a girl, you already dress and sweat like a man. If you're not careful you'll be buffer than Nick soon."

Nicole looks down at her bare arms, the slight definition in them. "That's Nick's problem. So you think I should keep dating him?"

Hayley has already painted three of her fingernails pink. "I guess. I mean if you like being around him you probably want to date him. I don't think girls and guys can just be friends, you know?"

"Yeah," Nicole says. Next year she's a senior anyway, and after that she's out of this small town. And the color Hayley picked isn't so bad. She saw Waverly in the halls yesterday and she was wearing a sweater just that shade.

/

They go to Minnesota for the summer, where their uncle takes them hiking and fishing and Hayley gets poison ivy so bad she locks herself in the tiny room she and Nicole are sharing and refuses to come out.

"C'mon girl," Aunt Irene says, dragging Nicole out in the cold morning air. She hands Nicole a rifle. "You remember how to use that?"

"I guess," Nicole says, and they go hunting in bright orange vests and camo pants. Irene does her hair up in this tight braid that keeps it pulled back away from her face and easy to tuck under a cap, and while Nicole's pretty sure she missed the deer by a long mile, when they walk up on it dying, her boots crunching on twigs and leaves, she hates the soft brown look of its eyes. She balks, and Irene claps her on the shoulder, not unkindly, and tells her to go fetch the tarp from the truck while she strings up the doe. Nicole walks backwards, watching the deer breathe its last breaths, hoofs kicking weakly. She throws up next to the truck and kicks dirt over it before draining a bottle of water and dragging the tarp out.

"Sit for a spell," Irene says, and shows her how to light a fire with two sticks, even though it's just past midday and hot as all hell. "I'm no good at basketball," she says, smiling at Nicole, "so I've just got this girl scout shit to pass on to you and your sister." Hayley cries when she sees roadkill by the side of the road, so Nicole isn't sure about that, but she smiles and nods. Irene fishes out some jerky and hands it to her. "You got a boyfriend, your mom says."

Nicole stares at the jerky in her lax fingers, realizing for the first time what happens to make meat appear on her table. "Yeah," she says, nibbling timidly. "Uh, Nick. He's in my grade…" she trails off, honestly out of relevant information to share about her boyfriend of nearly three years. "He likes church?"

"Sex Talk stuff oughtta be with your mother," Irene says, and Nicole flushes. "The only thing I'll say is that I hope that whoever you're with makes your heart beat double and your breath catch." She smiles, the lines of age disappearing from her face, and Nicole sees her mother's features for the first time, echoed back at her. "That's what I've got with your old uncle James, even if he does smoke like a chimney and spit all over the porch."

Once, Waverly had walked past Nicole in the hall and bumped shoulders with her, the barest brush of contact, and Nicole's heart had leapt into her throat, her fingers twitching. She imagined what Waverly's palm would feel like against hers and daydreamed her way through English, what Waverly's skin would look like draped in wildflowers Nicole picked for her, lit by candlelight.

/

"Cookies today," Laura hisses to Nicole in the last two minutes of History, shoving her pens into her bag, and Nicole grins because school food is shitty as school food is, but the cookies are baked on site and melt on your tongue, butter soft sweet with sticky molten chocolate chips.

They rush to the front of the line, using their long legs and willingness to throw elbows, and Nicole snags two, a veritable bounty by high school standards. Laura skips ahead, laughing, headed to their spot out on the field, and Nicole waves her on.

She ducks past Waverly's locker, wrapping a cookie in a thin napkin, and uses her school ID to jimmy the locker open, thankful for the first time that Laura can't remember her combination for shit and they have to force open her locker more often than not on the way to practice. She knows Waverly's got math with Rimberly, who can be counted on to hold the class late more than she can be counted on for information on how to solve polynomials, and she drops the cookie onto the metal floor of the locker before slamming it shut, furtive looks cast aside to see if anyone's watching.

She lingers at the water fountain to see Waverly come out and pop her locker open, dropping her textbook inside. She pulls out the cookie, smiling, and Hardy Champ throws an arm around her shoulders, dipping to bite her neck. Nicole scowls as he scoops it out of her hands, taking a big bite and smearing chocolate around his lips. Waverly's face flickers, dipping once before evening out. She shuts her locker and they walk away hand in hand.

Nicole stomps to the field and throws her sandwich away, ignoring Laura's confusion at her quicksilver mood.

/

"I really want to be your first time," Nick says, "our first time. You never forget, you know?"

Nicole drags a nail down his chest, makes a noncommittal sound. He plucks at the elastic of her sports bra. "You ever think about dressing up?"

At this precise moment, Nick is wearing a tanktop with six holes in it and sweatpants that probably used to be light grey. "Do you?"

He kisses her, smiling, ignorant to her annoyance. "Maybe prom?" he asks, shy, and Nicole nods after a second. This is what she wants, right? It's all the girls talk about during warmups. Nick kisses her again, wet and long and just as boring as the first time, and Nicole closes her eyes. She wonders if Waverly's lips would be less chapped, what sticky lipgloss would taste like instead of the stale flat beer Nick steals when his dad isn't home.

/

Nicole walks along the street to her house, one hand outstretched to catch on the prickly bush branches. There's an drained plastic bottle of water in her hands and her pulse is strong, her breathing steady. She feels good in the way only a hard workout can give, and she tells the empty bottle _I think I might be gay_ in her quietest murmur before screwing the cap back on and stuffing it among the spiderwebs and dead leaves.

/

It's the day before Christmas break and the halls are plastered with plastic snowflakes to match the ones flurrying outside. Nicole's just aced her History test and there's a wrapped package burning a hole in the bottom of her backpack. She asks to go to the bathroom and when the teacher nods without looking up she ducks out with her bag five minutes before the bell's about to ring with no intention of returning.

She pops Waverly's locker open with a familiar, easy twist of her card and sets the box she wrapped late at night in the bathroom, ripping scotch tape with her teeth, on top of the stack of books. She couldn't get the ribbon to sit right so she'd forgone it. Instead there's an index card folded in half taped to the top, Waverly's name in pink and gold pen. Underneath she wrote _it hurts to become_ because she'd like to think Waverly still reads her copy of the poem Nicole keeps under her pillow, worn from her fingers trailing over the words.

She's running out of places to hide, so she unfurls a book and lurks around the corner, idly musing that Waverly isn't so aware of her surroundings, if she's missed Nicole for years now. Her coach calls her a beacon, all long limbs tall body bright hair, jokes that they'll never lose her in a court rush. Waverly comes out and opens her locker, just like clockwork, and when she picks up the box her eyes shine. She turns to Champ, her constant shadow, and goes on her tiptoes to hug him. His face radiates confusion, then he grins, saying something Nicole can't catch, and kisses her again.

Nicole clenches her fists so tight her nails cut painful crescents in her palm. She watches Waverly open the box because she can't convince her feet to carry her away, bringing out the silvery chain Nicole had to order online to get, checking the mail obsessively before her parents can get to it, a little shotgun shell charm dangles from it. Nicole had debated hearts and little arrows and even tiny unicorns, but she saw the shell and it felt right. Shotguns are small and their range isn't as great or as fancy as a rifle but they kick like a mule and they'll fuck you right up.

Waverly turns, and Champ puts the necklace on her. Nicole lets herself think about, just for a second, her fingers feather light on the back of Waverly's neck, laying the chain gently against her skin.

/

Nicole breaks up with Nick when he asks her to senior prom, which is probably harsh, but Laura shrugs and gives her a high five. "Thank god you didn't sleep with him," she says when they see him swapping spit with Judy Macintosh at the tail end of a workout a week later, two days after they see him kissing Jill Lijah at the burger joint down the road. "Look, you can tell he's got like, three different kinds of herp already."

Nicole rolls her eyes, bent over after the last set of windsprints. The rest of the girls are headed back to change and leave, and she catches Laura by the sleeve.

"I think," she says, faltering. Laura blinks at her. "I like girls," she whispers, a secret among the whistles of the football team, the cross country boys whooping as they thump their way around the dirt track.

"Oh," Laura says. She stares. Nicole feels like she might throw up. She drops Laura's sleeve and takes a step back. "How do you know?" Laura asks, sounding confused and hesitant. Nicole's glance darts sideways, where Champ Hardy is acting the fool on the bleachers and Waverly sits, cross legged, her hand up to keep the sun out of her eyes; her smile is summer sky.

/

Nicole graduates and sits on the stage, ignoring the boring speeches and other names, scanning the bleachers row by row. She'd hoped Waverly had some senior friends and she's not disappointed, there she is in a sundress. Nicole wonders if she'd have freckles, if Nicole ever got close enough to see.

"There's a party tonight," Laura says afterwards, as they pose for pictures and Hayley avoids old teachers, "In Mason."

Mason is the next big town over, almost a forty minute drive away. Nicole frowns. "I thought we were going to the bonfire?"

"Lame," Laura says, "there's a bonfire like every other week. You know my cousin Liz, right? She goes to Mason High, so we're in and we can crash at her place. And there's like two high schools there, so it won't be weird. We can take my car."

Nicole blinks at her. "Don't you have it all planned out."

Nicole's mother calls her from the side, next to her beaming father. "Call me after dinner with your folks," Laura says, "wear something hot." She hesitates. "We won't know people there," she says, "maybe you could find…" She trails off, meaningful, and Nicole flushes.

When she turns to follow her parents out she sees Waverly posing with Kylie Curtis, the victory sign against her cheek. She's wearing sandals, and she can see the fine bones play under Waverly's skin at her ankles. "Maybe," Nicole echoes, and waves Laura away.

/

Nicole goes to the same college Hayley does, which horrifies and pleases them both equally. Her roommate is an international student who lives in her boyfriend's room, which burns Hayley up (her roommate has recently decided she's a satanist and sometimes tries to carve pentagrams into their floor).

Nicole plays basketball four hours a day and dates Kelly from her math class, not afraid to walk across campus with their fingers tangled. She has hair like Waverly's, and the same links of steel under her easy smile. Hayley walks in on them kissing, half naked on Nicole's bed, trying to get away from her crazy roommate, and laughs for a full minute, leaning against the door.

"How did I not see this coming? You are a huge stereotype," she says while Nicole fumbles for things to throw at her, "basketball-ow! Dumped a guy before you had to bang him-ow, okay _shit_ I'm leaving."

/

Nicole comes back in the summer and plays basketball on the neighborhood court, marveling at how things freeze in small towns, feeling both pushed back into who she was in highschool and a entirely different person altogether. She goes to the rodeo with Laura because that's what there is to do in small towns, and when she sees Waverly buying a hot dog she chokes on the flask of whiskey Laura'd snuck in. She'd forgotten what the lines of Waverly's body does to her. Her hair is longer and lighter, cut in some kind of layering that makes it wave and fluff. Nicole's in a hat and borrowed clothes, her hair dyed brown because she'd lost a bet with Lara the week before, and it makes her brave enough to sidle forward.

Waverly's got her nose buried in a book that looks like a dictionary of English and another language Nicole doesn't even recognize. Waverly Earp, reading the dictionary at the rodeo, and Nicole hurts with the knowledge that she deserves better than Purgatory and Champ.

There's a familiar chain twinkling around her neck and Nicole thinks about what she should say: _hey, I'm Nicole, did we go to high school together?_ or maybe _do you wanna get coffee sometime?_ ; She reaches out a careful hand to tap Waverly on her bare shoulder and Champ Hardy's name blares over the speakers; Waverly squeals, hurrying away. Her skin brushes past Nicole's fingertips, the lightest touch, and after she's gone Nicole brings the fingers to her mouth, against her dry lips.

/

Nicole goes to Kelly's for Thanksgiving, where her family is completely accepting and lovely and it makes Nicole feel welcome in the same way it makes her chew her nails to nothing while they pull up at her house for Christmas. "It'll probably be okay," she tells Kelly nervously in the driveway. "Hayley's engaged to a musician Dad hates, so…"

Kelly grips her hand. "Everything's going to be fine," she says like her eyes aren't wider than a deer caught in trucklights.

Her mother makes a ham and her father asks just before grace, with a tone of deep suspicion, if Kelly plays any instruments, but otherwise it's a family dinner like any other, except that during dessert her mother pulls her in the kitchen to help plate pie and bursts into tears instead, hugging Nicole close. Nicole assures her she never felt alienated as a child, which isn't so true, and that she's always felt loved by her parents, which is very true, and pats her mother awkwardly on the back with the same hand holding the piecutter, dropping pumpkin filling on the tile until her father comes in and pries her mother off.

"She's a looker," her dad says, awkward, and then: "way to go, son," which isn't very funny and makes her stomach clench, but it's her dad so she rolls her eyes and lets her mother smack him upside the head and make him do the dishes solo.

/

In the summer before her junior year she sneaks into the high school graduation to see Waverly walk the stage in her graduation cap and let her mind imagine what dress Waverly's wearing underneath her black gown. She sweats alone on the tin benches and wanders through the field, nodding at kids she'd known and teachers that remember her, walking past Waverly and her friends twice, Champ Hardy still clung to her like a limpet.

Late at night, before she goes back to school, she jogs around Purgatory, looking at how things change and remain the same. She stops at Waverly's house and climbs the tree for old times sake. She thinks if she'd been braver in high school maybe she could have tossed pebbles at Waverly's bedroom window, or if it was a movie she could have said something sweet and rhyming, but she wasn't brave in high school and she doesn't live in a movie, so instead she leaves a drawing in chalk on Waverly's front driveway, the powder sticking to the inside of her shorts pocket, a white gradcap with _congrats_ in her nicest cursive. Next to it she leaves a few books she'd found in her university's bookstore, dictionaries for old languages.

/

Kelly and her break up senior year, drifting as they figure out what to do with themselves as they enter adulthood, and while it's not angry it is lingeringly sour. She spends a lot of time moping, wishing Hayley hadn't graduated ahead of her so she could complain at her more often. She goes to Hayley's wedding at Christmas, at her imminently-to-be-husband's family's ranch in Texas, and hides from her maid of honor duties by drinking beer with her brother in law and shooting up the bottles with his b.b. rifle. He hits on her at the rehearsal dinner.

"Gay," she reminds him, and aims him at a cluster of distant girl cousins and college friends.

She gets drunk at the open bar wedding and makes out with her sister in law in the bathroom, who giggles at having kissed a girl for the first time, just like Katy Perry, then staggers off to find her boyfriend. She kisses her sister on the cheek and dances with her father, and doesn't think about Waverly Earp walking down the aisle towards her, both of them in a long white dress and lace veil.

/

Hayley has her first baby, a girl, and names her Jamie Nicole. Nicole buys a teddy bear because that's what she thinks you're supposed to do for babies and washes her hands three times before holding her against her body and marveling at her tiny toes. "You think you want kids someday?" Hayley asks, cruising on pain meds and lying exhausted on hospital linen.

Kids, Nicole thinks, and a flash of thought drives through her mind, a little girl with Nicole's hair and Waverly's smile. "I haven't thought about it," she says, and presses a kiss to her niece's wisp of dark hair.

/

She moves into a shitty apartment and somehow acquires a cat with beseeching brown eyes and long fur that sheds everywhere, and she calls her Annie Oakley and spends time looking into her mostly indifferent eyes as she practices. "Nicole," she says, extending a hand. Oakley looks at her finger, sniffing for treats, then butts her head against Nicole's nails. Nicole scritches between her ears. "Can I get a beer?" She frowns. "What beer is most impressive… or most gay?"

Oakley bends in half to lick her junk, and Nicole sighs.

Nicole parks her cruiser out front, minutes off from her shift and still in her uniform because it gives her confidence and makes her ass look good. She walks up to the bar and back to the car three times, breathing deeply. She takes her hat on and off again four times. Then she opens the door, the cool air blowing stale beer and peanuts into her face as she slips inside and leans against the entryway. Waverly Earp, she thinks, may be be everything she's mused on since she was knee-high or she could be none of it.

Nicole can't wait to find out.


End file.
